Ukraine-Russia conflict newest: Russia’s Lavrov alerts use of ‘any means’ as North Korean troops stored from fight

The Kremlin is using state media, fake news sites and social media accounts to push divisive narratives about the war and US president-elect Donald Trump before he returns to the White House next month.

Analysts said the content is aimed at turning sentiment against Ukraine at a crucial time, to reduce US military aid and ensure a Russian victory.

Clips from fake videos purporting to show Ukrainian soldiers burning effigies of Trump and his supporters have circulated among Trump supporters and believers in QAnon, a conspiracy theory that claims Trump is waging war against a satanic cabal of powerful world leaders.

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov faced heavy criticism as he arrived at an annual meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Malta.

The Russian diplomat walked out of the hall before US secretary of state Antony Blinken arrived as the two traded accusations in a heated annual gathering.

The Polish foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, said: “My message to the Russian delegation is the following: We are not taken in by your lies. We know what you’re doing. You’re trying to rebuild the Russian empire and we will not let you. We will resist you every inch of the way.”

Mr Lavrov hit back by accusing Nato and the EU of politicising the OSCE.

He accused the West of the “reincarnation of the cold war, only now with a much greater risk of a transition to a hot one”.

Western countries including the United States assailed Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov over the war in Ukraine at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Malta.

“My message to the Russian delegation is the following: We are not taken in by your lies. We know what you’re doing. You’re trying to rebuild the Russian empire and we will not let you. We will resist you every inch of the way,” Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski said.

Poland and Ukraine’s foreign ministers were amongst those who left the room for Mr Lavrov’s speech, which is common for international meetings. Mr Lavrov was also absent when US secretary of state Antony Blinken spoke.

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said the use of a hypersonic missile in the Ukraine war was to make the West understand that Moscow was ready to use any means to ensure no “strategic defeat” would be inflicted on Moscow.

Russia deployed the Oreshnik hypersonic missile against the Ukrainian city of Dnipro last month in what Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin described as a test of a missile he said could not be brought down.

He said Russia could bring other such missiles into action in “combat conditions” if required.

“The message is that you, I mean the US and the allies of the US, who also provide these long-range weapons to the Kyiv regime – they must understand that we would be ready to use any means not to allow them to succeed in what they call a strategic defeat of Russia,” Mr Lavrov told US journalist Tucker Carlson.

“They fight for keeping their hegemony over the world, on any country, any region, any continent. We fight for our legitimate security interests.”

In his 80-minute interview, Mr Lavrov also said that the West should abandon any notion that Russia had no “red lines” that it would bar anyone from crossing in defending its interests.

“If they are following the logic which some Westerners have been pronouncing lately, that they don’t believe that Russia has red lines, they announced their red lines, these red lines are being moved again and again, this is a very serious mistake,” he said.

Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) carried out a successful cyber-attack against one of Russia’s largest banks, disrupting services for hundreds of thousands of customers, a source in the agency told the Kyiv Independent.

The website for Gazprombank was reportedly inaccessible in France and Germany, and the mobile application also experienced outages. Russian state media on Wednesday confirmed problems accessing the bank’s website.

The source said the agency directed excessive traffic to the bank’s website and mobile application, overloading its servers in what is known as a distributed denial of service attack.

Both Ukraine and Russia have used cyber warfare during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov walked out from an annual security meeting in Malta before US secretary of state Antony Blinken arrived as he accused the West of reviving the Cold War.

Speaking at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe ministerial meeting in Malta, Mr Lavrov said the West was provoking a direct conflict with Russia.

He said the US actions were driven by a desire to “return Nato to the political spotlight.”

“After the Afghan disgrace, there was a need for a new common enemy,” Mr Lavrov said during his first stop in an EU nation since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. “The result is the reincarnation of the Cold War, but now with the far greater risk of its escalation into the hot phase.” Mr Blinken, who spoke after Mr Lavrov left the room, put the blame for escalation in the region back on Russia, noting that the Russian foreign minister, the fourth speaker, did not stick around to listen to other speakers.

“Let’s talk about escalation,” Mr Blinken said, citing the deployment of North Korean forces in Europe, the use of an intermediate-range ballistic missile to attack Ukraine, Russia’s move to lower the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, and attacks on Ukraine‘s energy infrastructure. “Mr Lavrov spoke about the sovereign right of every member-state to make their own choices,” Mr Blinken said. “That’s exactly what this is about: the sovereign right of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people to make their own choices about the future, not to have those choices made in and by Moscow.”

Ukraine’s Chief of Staff visited the US to meet with senior officials from the incoming Trump administration in an effort to secure continued support for Ukraine, according to

Andriy Yermak held talks on Wednesday with Mike Waltz, Mr Trump’s pick for national security adviser, and retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, named as an envoy for Ukraine, a person familiar with the meeting said. The person was not authorised to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Neither side gave immediate details of the session. It was one of many meetings that Mr Trump’s aides are having with foreign representatives before Trump returns to the White House.

Mr Trump, a longtime admirer of Putin, has called for bringing a quick end to fighting in Russia’s nearly 3-year war against Ukraine’s Western-aligned government. He has given few details of his plans.

Poland signed a $4bn loan under the United States’ Foreign Military Financing program that will help finance the transformation of its armed forces, the Polish defence minister has said.

“This is another proof of enormous trust and strong alliance between Poland and the United States of America,” Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz posted on X.

Mr Kosiniak-Kamysz said that in total the United States has provided Poland with over $11bn to finance armament programs, including Patriot air defence systems and Apache helicopters.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov attended the annual meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Malta, marking his first visit to a European Union nation since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha were also present, with Ukraine dominating the agenda.

Mr Lavrov, who is under EU sanctions but not subject to a travel ban, accused the West of escalating the Ukraine conflict during his remarks but left the meeting before Mr Blinken and others could respond.

Slovakia wants to keep oil and gas transit corridors from Russia operational because they are reliable and have stable prices, Slovak foreign minister Juraj Blanar said on Facebook on Thursday, after meeting Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

“Even though we are working on diversification of these supplies, it is important for us to have supplies secured in volumes we need and at favourable price,” Mr Blanar said after the meeting on the sidelines of an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe meeting in Malta.